Upstairs their breakfast table stood in the window bow as they had left
it. Bread he had broken on the greasy plate. His cup with the coffee he
couldn't drink. Pathetic, if you hadn't remembered.

"You might as well. If it isn't you, it'll be another woman, Sharlie. If
it isn't me, it'll be another man."

That was what he had thought her.

It didn't matter.




II


She stood at the five roads, swinging her stick, undecided.

The long line of the beeches drew her, their heads bowed to the north as
the south wind had driven them. The blue-white road drew her, rising,
dipping and rising; between broad green borders under grey walls.

She walked. She could feel joy breaking loose in her again, beating up
and up, provoked and appeased by the strong, quick movement of her body.
The joy she had gone to her lover for, the pure joy he couldn't give her,
coming back out of the time before she knew him.

Nothing mattered when your body was light and hard and you could feel the